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The White House Rural Council recently met to focus on a coordinated response to historic drought conditions that are affecting communities across rural America. The goal at the SBA and across the Administration is making sure that these hard-hit rural communities have the tools and the resources they need to navigate and recover from these severe drought conditions.
To date, the SBA has issued 71 agency drought declarations in 32 states covering more than 1,630 counties. These declarations allow small businesses, small agricultural cooperatives and non-farm small businesses that are economically affected by the drought in their community to apply for SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL).
To find out if your county has been declared a drought disaster area, view SBA’s current disaster declarations page. To learn more about how to apply for a disaster loan, go to the SBA Disaster Assistance section of the SBA website.
You may also contact SBA’s Disaster Assistance Customer Service Center by email at disastercustomerservice@sba.gov, or by calling 800 659 2955. The USDA’s Disaster and Drought Assistance site also is a good resource, and includes links to maps of current disaster declaration areas and a weekly weather and drought blog.
The National Credit Union Administration will be announcing that an additional 1,000 credit unions are eligible for low-income designation, which exempts them from the statutory cap on small business lending. This allows unlimited lending to small business owners, including farmers. Of the 1,000 credit unions that will be receiving this designation, nearly half are located in a severely drought-stricken state.